Back in November, we published news about the NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet update to Android 5.0. A part of the update was the “Green Box” promotion, which gives Half-Life 2, Portal, and Half-Life 2: Episode One free with the purchase of a 32GB LTE SHIELD Tablet. Today, Half-Life 2: Episode One launches on Google Play store for $7.99 USD (or free with the Green Box). Unlike Half-Life 2 and Portal, which runs on the original NVIDIA SHIELD, Episode One requires an NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet. It also requires a controller.

Like the previous release of Half-Life 2 and Portal, this is a complete port to the ARM architecture of NVIDIA Tegra K1. The game will run natively on the device, without being streamed from a host PC. For a little perspective, the Tegra K1 has a little more compute performance than a GeForce 9600 GT – a popular mid-range GPU that launched two years after Episode One.

Well, apparently he is available on the NVIDIA SHIELD, now, along with Portal. I am not talking about GameStream. These two games have been ported to Android, but only through the SHIELD. From their screenshots, the mobile games look pretty good, especially Portal with its look-through mechanics.

As usual, whenever NVIDIA really wants something, they will often parachute engineers through your skylights to do it for you. The company revolves around delivering experiences to their customers, which is a good mindset for a company to have. This is one of the main reasons for Microsoft and the success of PC gaming, especially in the late 90's with their DirectX efforts.

If you have an NVIDIA SHIELD, Half Life 2 and Portal are available now for $9.99, through TegraZone.

Remember that cake we got last week? It was sent by NVIDIA to celebrate the release of Portal (May 12th) on SHIELD. They are at it again...

When you get a FedEx box meant for a poster or tube of some kind, but you didn't order said poster, you are likely to be confused. Imagine my surprise when I opened it up and found...a bright green crowbar. This might become a habit for them; we received a pry bar from NVIDIA in April of 2012 to tease the release of the GeForce GTX 690.

Based on the message on the crow bar it seems that a Half-Life 2 release on SHIELD is going to be following soon. Sorry to disappoint anyone that was expecting Half-Life 3...